Sometimes the media brings to light atrocities that demand change and sometimes its exploits them by scaring the public and reinforcing old prejudices.
This article about the media's coverage of a young woman who died after being gang-raped on a Delhi bus, pointed out how the coverage of this event has brought to light the problem of sexual assaults in India. However it also has driven people to the streets to demand justice.
When a story goes global there is no way to hide it any longer. You can't deny it, say no comment, or exercise the 5th in the court of the media. Just like many people in America have demanded new gun control laws in the wake of the shooting in Connecticut people in India have gone to the street to demand new laws sexual assault laws and the hanging of everyone who took part in the gang-rape.
But just because a story goes global doesn't mean it will lead to cultural change or new laws.
The problem is that so many stories go global, that they seem to drown each other out. It the hours after a big story hits the media picks at it like flies pick at a dead horse publishing every juice detail, playing out every theory until they have made all of us so confused and horrified that we can barely recall what the story was about in the first place.
Before we can put all the pieces together another breaking story comes across the wire and we our given a new monster to fear.
A few days after the incident in New Delhi, a crowd of villagers in India publicly beat a politician accused of rape. I wonder what would happen if we could publicly beat every politician that is accused of committing a crime in the media.
I like to watch shows like "Reliable Sources" and "Daily Show" that are critical of the way the media covers important stores. We need more programs and stories that commend the media when they bring important stories to light and condemn them when they spread rumors.
need more good stories about victims
need a filter more shows that look at it and think about good vs bad. or at least make fun of it.
Rin Kelly, a writer for Salon.com wrote an interesting article that asks does the media coverage of mass shooting inspire killers to act. By surrounding the victims houses, chasing down crying people and publishing every rumor about the killer and their motives before they can be verified the media is giving more than 15 minutes of fame to the killers. What can be done to encourage the media to show some restraint and respect for the victims and the broken families they leave behind?
In the wake of tragic, life shattering event like mass shootings it is easy for people to watch TV news and let in shape the story as every horifing detail comes to light.
"(In 1999 right after the shooting at Columbine) Rumors of bullying and vengenance quickly hit airwaves, where the school's nearly 2,000 kids heard and absorbed them. Teenagers eager to talk then repeated them back to a 24-hour media eager to speculate,"
In this article Kelly points out that the inaccurate stories and speculator that follow mass shootings can have long term effect on how the public's perception of why these things continue to happen.
"In the process, (In the coverage of Columbine) we demonized an already vulnerable population of teens, subtly vilified the victims themselves, drew a roadmap to infamy for copycats, pretended that the rarest types of violence are our most pressing violence."
Towards the end of the article Kelly talks about behavioral expert Loren Coleman the author of "The Copycat Effect", who argues that many of the many of the killers in the most recent mass shooting are following the methods that were layout in the wall to wall coverage of earlier shootings like Columbine.
"Now with mass shootings too, he says 'we're even having the copycat down to the type of gun."
Here is an article from July that shows how several newspapers covered the movie theater shooting with a picture of the killer and the body count. There must be a better way to memorialize the victims and talk about what can be done to deal with the problems of gun violence instead of glorifying the killers and their carnage. It takes time to put together good pieces that go below the obvious headline and that is something that few news organizations have the patients to put out.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Will Newtown Lead to New Day?
As the Out-of-town media roll out of Newtown after the last funeral, and the focus of the all day news channels returns to a renewed countdown to the fiscal cliff many are wondering if Newtown will lead to a turning point in the war against gun violence or just another scary number (27 dead, 20 of them children). If England was able to enact major changes to its gun laws after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996 and Australia found a reason to give up most of their guns after the Port Arthur massacre, why didn't American make any significant changes after Columbine in 1999 or Virginia Tech in 2007 or the Aurora in July, 2012? This latest massacre pushed President Obama to finally jump off the cliff and call for a commission to look into what can be done to stop the violence. Something he was unwilling to talk about even after the massacre in a movie Theater in July. But that unfortunate event happened in the middle of an election and this one happened 11 days before Christmas. After several days of conferring on what would be the best way to respond the NRA decided to release a statement. If only we had guns in every school we would have no more tragedies like this. However that didn't work in Columbine. Many people responded to Newtown by giving up their guns at gun by back events like this one in Los Angeles. Others are using Facebook to encourage people to post their random acts of kindness. No matter when these act of senseless murder occur they always inspire a lot of talk and very little action as the national spotlight moves on to the next distraction. If no major changes come out of this it is bound to happen again. Its not a matter of if but when. "If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, now incable must Man be of learning from experience." George Bernard Shaw.
It turns out china is not the only government looking for ways to censor or restrict internet use.
Yahoo appears to be the only company that has joined Google's call to fight internet censorship in China. While supports in China set up a makeshift shrine outside Google headquarters fearing that this could mean the end for the King of Search in China.
Google's Dispute with China has revived talk of a Global Online Freedom Act that would punish companies for sharing users info with "internet-restricting" companies.
Many people in China have found holes in the Great Fire Wall that allow them to gain access to restricted sites like Facebook and Youtube.
The Italy government is looking to introduce a law that would force people to obtain authorization form the communication ministry to post video on Youtube.
This story in The New York Times states that Verve Wireless has come up with a way to help local newspapers bring their product to the 40 million people in the U.S. that actively use their cell phone to go online. Verve Wireless provides publishing technologies to create newspaper websites for cell phones in exchange for a share of the ad revenue.
The Associated Press, Verve's biggest customer, made an investment of $3 million to finance the company, based Encinitas, CA. Verve already provides mobile versions of 4,000 newspapers from 140 publishers.
Verve's chief executive, Art Howe said mobile versions of Web sites “cannot just be Internet lite,” they must be redesigned to better fit this new medium of cell phones and PDAs. Verve designed a application for the iPhone one that lets users look through the day's headlines, save articles to read later and send articles to friends.
“Mobile is actually a better way to reach people than print or even Web. It’s versatile, immediate, travels and is just as compelling,” said Howe. With Verve' software publishers can place national ad campaigns on their sites or upload local ads to their cellphone sites.
Philadelphia Magazine, for example, sent readers of its Verve-developed Web site a text message offering $4 grapefruit cocktails and half-price appetizers at a local bar.
Mobile companies hope the ad customization that cellphones offer will encourage advertisers to spend more for ads on cellphones.
Advertisers will spend only $1.6 billion on mobile ads this year, while spending $26 billion online, predicts eMarketer, a marketing research firm. While their is a hugh potential for growth in mobile readership and advertising I think it will take a three to five years for this market to really take off and for companies to realize that they can reach potential customers by advertising on mobile sites.
My personal cell phone, a cheap, Samsung SGH A707 only lets me look up news on CNN.com and it only lets you browse through a list of different news categories. Even people who have the iPhone run into areas where their internet connection is slow or does not work because they cannot find a wireless network.
Reading a newspaper or a book on the small scree of a cellphone or PDA or a electronic book reader is never going to be as easy as reading on a laptop or reading the print copy. Its like watching a movie on a big screen TV and then watching it on a portable DVD player.
I think that most people who have iPhones only use it to surf the internet when they have to. They use when they are at work, stung in an airport or, taking the subway. Most people would rather open up their laptop or buy a print copy then read on a screen so small that you have to squint at it if they really wanted to spend a few minutes reading the paper. I think most people would rather watch a movie on a big screen TV rather then their laptop or a portable DVD player.
Surfing the web on your cell phones is good for finding out quick facts like the weather, sports scores and stock updates if you cannot get to you computer or you do not want to wait for your laptop to start up. How many "CrackBerry" do you that spend several hours every week reading the paper? The PDA and the cellphone are great devices for keeping in touch with friends no matter how far away you are but not for reading.
I think that people who do spend a lot of time surfing the internet on their cellphone get most of their news from TV news and rarely read any of the copy below the headlines when they glance at the local paper.
Creating mobile websites for local newspapers will help them to increase their ad revenues but I think it will do little to help them improve circulation or increase the number of people who read the paper everyday.
This is another tool that newspapers should jump on to make their product more accessible to more readers but in the end it will do little to solve the revenue problems that the newspaper industry is facing.
This article and an article in the Chicago Tribune (protest sites for Olympics) that talks about how the Chinese are creating "free speech zones" for people who want to protest in public during the Olympics made me wonder
How can you say you are for freedom of speech on one hand and then insist that if people want to protest in public they must do it in a designated area far away from major political events?
Just as Chinese officials are trying to keep the Olympics from becoming to political officials in Denver and the twin cities are trying to keep the conventions from becoming to political and unpredictable. Denver wants to use the conventions as a world stage to showcase what so great about their cities and the great states of Colorado. They want people to visit Denver. Which is good idea, considering you can travel hundreds of miles to an exotic city without having to change you currency.
The thing is these great cities can still get a good PR boost without having to wall off free speech and keep their plans control the protesters a secret.
It is disturbing to hear about the increased secrecy over what the way the police plan to deal with protesters and what equipment they are planning to purchase to control crowds that could grow as large as the crowd that met Obama in Berlin yesterday.
The refusal of the Denver police to turn over records of the equipment they plan to purchase for crowd control and what they plan to do with unruly protesters have created an atmosphere that is ripe for rumor s and speculation.
This atmosphere has given credence to ridiculous rumors like the police are planning to buy devices that use sound waves to causing them to lose control of their bowels. This system was called the "brown note" in some corners.
Why would anyone believe a rumor that police would resort to using a "Brown Note" against protesters? How could they possibly clean up the mess?
Apparently Denver city officials were afraid that someone would. On Wednesday they told Rocky Mountain News that these rumors were false and insisted that the equipment that they are buying would not include "microwave or sonic waves or weapons that use "slime" or "goo" to immobilize protesters" according to a Fox News article.
Now that we known they are not planning on hiring the GhostBusters, or that Marc Summers from the Nickelodeon's Double Dare. Unfortunately we still cannot rule out if they plan to use sharks with laser beams on their heads.
Until the police realize the details to the public they will never be able to escape the rumors and speculation that will fly all over the internet and eventually leak out into the mainstream media.
"Free speech zones" weather they are in Beijing, a city known for keeping secrets or Denver is a violation of our freedom of speech because it creates a physical barrier between the people and the politicians and the media covering the event.
In the case of the DNC convention, Denver is planning to keep protesters couped up in a cage made of chicken wire and chain link fences that are more than 600 yards from the convention.
Those who attempt to exercise their First Amendment rights outside this makeshift cage, which is partially obscured by trees and sculptures, will be arrested.
According to an editorial in the White Mountain Independent (a small Colorado paper) John W. Whitehead,
Whitehead points out that even some members of the media are so scared that protesters could disturb their broadcasts or endanger their reporters that they are using Denver officials to keep protesters away from media tents.
It is the job of the media to cover protesters to brave unruly situations and cover all sides of the story of the convention. They must cover the protesters outside of the convention center and keep the Democratic party from dictating the coverage of the event.
Protesters are only perceived as dangerous because their message challenges the status quo. It's the message that is feared. Thus, efforts to confine and control the dissenters are really efforts to confine and control their political messages, whatever those might be. Free speech zones and all the secrecy that goes with them are not only unconstitutional by unpractical for Denver. By restricting where protesters can go to a few areas far from the action you are enticing them to do more in a desperate attempt to grab the attention of the press.
If you make them feel like they voice cannot be heard because they are physically kept hundreds of feet away from everyone that is participating in the conventions some protesters are more likely to protest in ways in more extreme and even violent ways. Some protesters will come to the free speech zones with the attitude that the only way to get reporters to bring their cameras over and take a peek at what they are doing is to get on the nerves of the police.
Fencing off protesters and keeping them out of the action sends the message to people all over the county that they are really two Americans. ( to steal a line from a famous speech of John Edwards) The connected: politicians who claim to represent the people, corporate tycoons and really rich people and the unconnected; everyone else who lack the money and fame to get their voice heard. If protesters felt like someone in the convention was willing to listen to their cries if they felt like they did not have to create a chaotic situation to get the attention of the media they might be more likely to corporate.
The protesters need to a reason to believe that some of the politicians did not come all this way just to grandstand and preach from their bully pulpit. They did not come from all over the country and all over the world to be treated like terrorists suspects and extremists.
When political protest is caged, it's not just the rights of a few protesters that are at stake. The very definition of freedom is in danger.
Putting physical barriers between protesters and everyone that has a ticket to the convention endanger the definition of freedom that this country was founded on. The bill of rights was written to give freedom to the people that could only be restricted in extreme circumstances.
Citizens were given the freedoms that are guaranteed in the bill of rights to make the government fear the people. Thanks to the paranoia of terrorism in the wake of September 11 terrorists attacks citizens fear the government more then ever before.
In Beijing the International Olympic Committee's chief coordinator, Hein Verbruggen believes that by creating "free speech zones" the IOC is "Showing that Beijing is serious about human rights."
According to Olympics security director Liu Shaowu "free speech zones" give Chinese citizens an opportunity to exercise their freedom of speech that they were given by Chinese law.
"Chinese law guarantees the legal rights of demonstration and assembly," Liu said.
By fencing off protesters Denver officials are lowing themselves to the standards of the Chinese by caging protesters. In China any sign of lowering restrictions on freedom of speech is sen as a sign that the government is giving in to public pressure and actually listening to the people. In American where are freedom of speech is guaranteed by the constitution any sign that the government is trying to cutoff the average citizens from public debate and keep them out of the political process.
Chinese man is murdered for filming a fight between city officials and villagers.
"On Monday, Wei Wenhau accidentally found himself a witness to a confrontation in the town where he lived in Hubei, a central Chinese province.
Villagers were quarreling with city officials who had arrived in the area to dump waste near their homes. When the officials started to unload the rubbish, a scuffle broke out.
Wenhau worked at a senior level for a construction company and was also a member of the Communist party. He was an upstanding member of the community and on seeing the violence he thought he'd record it.
Reports indicate that Wenhau was hauled out of his car and set on by all the government workers - about 50 of them. He was reportedly attacked for a period of five minutes."
The story of Wei Wenhau's death only came to light as a result of a blogger Paul Walsh. His blog was shut down shortly after his site was overrun by posts attacking the Chinese government.
In a democracy the free press are responsible for holding the government, corporations and anyone else with power accountable to the citizens to make sure they adhere to the rule of law In a dictatorship like China, where the government imposes its will on the people with the rule of fear the citizens have no one to turn to.
Citizen Journalists take on the government imposes on its people by taking up cameras and writing in blogs to bring there brutality to light.
To continue to push for free speech and democracy across the globe America should protest censorship wherever it arises.
Instead of standing by Taiwan and the Bush administration warned Taiwan nine times last year against voting for a referendum to apply to the United Nations as a country separate from China.
We must led the Taiwanese determine how they want to declare their independence from China.
If American does not speak out against China and support citizen Journalists in the effort to bring the truth to the world China's influence will only continue to grow. The ability of China's government to transform their economy, build enough power plants to keep it growing and take on epic architectural feats such as the Three Gorges Damn project have encourage other tyrants. China is inspiring new and old tyrants by providing them with a blueprint of how to impose your will on the people and grow your economy at the same time.
The best way that America can derail this blueprint is by supporting citizen journalists in China to shame the government by bring the truth to light. We have to show then the extreme poverty that still exists throughout the country. We have show how government officials use brutality to strike fear in the eyes of the citizens. Most of all we have to keep the memory of Wei Wenhau alive. No matter how hard the Chinese try to build a firewall to keep out the ideas of the free world the truth will always fine a way to slip through the cracks.
The best thing that we can do as Journalists and citizens is to keep talking about the injustices that continue to go on in China. As the Olympics approach us China will look for any way it can to drum up positive media stories to make it look like the government is more concerned with improving the lives of ordinary citizens then with maintains control. We must tune out the propaganda and bring the stories of citizen journalists to light so that the public can see both sides of the next superpower.
Microsoft and Yahoo both plan to add new measures to their search engines that are support to make all search data anonymous and therefore almost useless after a certain number of months. Microsoft would erase identifying data after 18 months and Yahoo will make all search data anonymous after only 13 months.
These announcements come a month after Privacy International released a report that called Google "Hostile to privacy" for not protecting the privacy of user information.
Some people question if other search engines really do less Evil to user privacy then Google.
Despite all the personal information that Google has amassed: Google has never leaked personal data or shared it with the government.
As a result of Microsoft;'s announcement Google said that it has also decided to make user data anonymous after 18 months.
Only Ask.com has created a service called AskEraser a search option that erases all history of Ask searches.
These announcements make me wonder; Can any of these measures really protect user information?
Can you really keep search data private?
especially after AOL released search search records of 650,000 of its users in August 2006 to the U.S. Department of Justice.
What if AOL told the the Department of Justice that they have enacted a measure to make users data anonymous and that they had no way of recovering this data? Does anyone think the federal government would ever by that excuse?
What will happen the next time (Yahoo 'helped jail China writer') China asks Yahoo for the privacy information on users that are speaking out against the government?
Do users really care if advertising companies and government agencies look at their search data?
While it may seem unnerving to some that the government can force search engines to hand over search data and personal information I think Americans have much bigger privacy concerns to deal with.
After all the press about the NSA's warrant less wiretapping program we still do not know a lot about who was targeted or what standards if any the NSA had to meet to get permission to tape someone's phone line.
The Bush administration has kept Congress from reading classified documents on the program by claiming executive privilege. So Congress recently dropped a subponea on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President Bush.
I think that the most evil thing that Google and other search engines are doing is going along with China's attempt to censor search results.
While I believe that people will eventually find a few to get the truth through cracks in the great firewall of China taking part in censorship with keep millions in the dark.
China still believes that they can maintain their power by keeping their citizens uneducated. The Internet has made it very easy for the common person to educated himself on any subject they choose.
Google has asked U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers like tariffs. China is not the only country that is afraid of the power that the Internet provides.
A study released last month by the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of 41 countries surveyed engage in Internet censorship.
Apparently the Great Chinese firewall does not extend to Google Earth. Research Hans Kristensen posted the first photo of what is believed to be a Jin-class Submarine to the Strategic Security blog on the Federation of American Scientists web site.
Since Google Earth has been around for a couple of years now it is hard for me to believe that China did not see this coming.
Have you ever watch a YouTube video on a computer with a slow connection and after playing three seconds the video freezes. And you have to restart the video twenty times just to get past the first thirty seconds?
According to this article Internet providers will soon give more people the ability to explore the vast library of videos that are available on the Internet without wondering if their Internet connection can handle it.
Faster Internet speed has already made huge leaps in e-commerce and how people get the news.
With faster Internet people who used to organize social gatherings and debate issues on MySpace to take the next step by watching and creating videos on YouTube.
It is also giving bloggers a chance to step out from behind the current of anonymity and show the world what they are really talking about through vlogs.
While you can already buy a cheap web camera at Best Buy for under $50 Sony has created pocket size web cam that allows you to publish videos directly to web file-sharing sites or to your personal vlog that will only set you back $200.
While YouTube already allows you to upload video from cell phones this camera will allow vloggers to store up to five hours on a 2 gigabyte memory stick Pro Duo media card.
The GC1 Net-Sharing CAM will be available in September.
"Comcast is reportedly working on technology to provide broadband speeds of up to 160 megabits per second, roughly 26 times faster than its current 6-megabit service."
Maybe in five to ten years it will reduce the time it takes to download a movie from several hours to a day to a matter of minutes.
Right now faster Internet connections are allowing more people to watch videos on YouTube, catch up on old episodes of their favorite TV shows and watch streaming TV channels through services like Joost.
It is not only opening more eyes to the power of the Internet superhighway but it is giving them a chance to interact and use it to get their individual message out there. It is pushing inter connectivity to its limits and it is letting us access information on any subject we desire in a matter of seconds.
The more people use the Internet the better of a tool it will be in helping people to connect and take part in the global debate.
Google understands this and has made a bid of $4.6 billion in the upcoming federal auction of spectrum to break the strangle hold that phone companies and cable companies have had over high speed Internet access.
"That would be revolutionary," said Bob Williams, director of Consumers Union's HearUsNow.org, a website that promotes telecommunications competition.
"If you want high-speed Internet service, you basically have a choice of two, and in a lot of places you don't have any choice ... and that situation has to change."
Google wants to stop cable and phone companies from continuing to raise their rates because they have virtually no competition.
Wireless companies control all access to the spectrum they license from the government, which is why Apple Inc.'s iPhone can't be used on any network other than AT&T's.
Under Google's plan, people could connect any device to any network and run any software they want on their phones, including free Internet-based calling systems such as Skype.
This is what we need to make the Internet cheap enough so more people can use the Internet to its full potential on all their electronic devices from home computers to cell phones.
As the Internet becomes cheaper more people will use it when more people use it ad rates will go up way way up and maybe just maybe people will stop telling us that print media is a dying industry.
Google is trying to speed up this process. Adding competition to the high speed Internet market could free millions from slow Internet connects and give them the power to interact with the information superhighway instead of just observing it.
Over the last two weeks it seems like more and more major media organization are vulnerable for takeover by a major corporation.
Another scary trend in media is the buying up of every new idea buy the big corporations. The latest offer that has been through out was made by Microsoft. After years of trying to create a half decent search engine to compete with the likes of Yahoo and Google. Microsoft has decided that if you can't be them buy them when they made a proposal to buy Yahoo for $50 billion. Lets put this into perspective Google purchased YouTube for a mere $1.65 billion and NewsCorp bought MySpace for $580 million. Is Yahoo really wroth 25 times the combine cost of both of these sites? In the long run maybe.
According to a blog on the Huffington Post by James Boyce the host of "Heading Left" on BlogTalkRadio a weekly radio show, a major city newspaper will fold in the next twelve months.
It seems a little hard to consider a guy who has never worked for a newspaper (according to his bio.) an expert on the industry but there are a few things that I agree with in his blog.
It is very pathetic that newspapers which such a rich traditions as the Boston Globe have to offer a $40 rebate on their monthly subscription. It sounds a lot like what many American car companies such as GMC and Ford did a few years ago by offering huge rebates to entice new customs.
Meanwhile Toyota's market share continued to grow while they were selling cars that cost thousands more then their American counterparts. Toyota realized that by making high quality products they could add value to their product and justify their high prices.
The problems with huge rebates is it lowers the value of your product. Rebates are a good short term gimmick, but if you use them for to long customer start to expect them and only turn to you because you are selling a product that they can afford rather then something they actually want.
He is right that circulation has been falling since March 2005 at almost every major newspaper and many newspapers like the Washington Post have posted scene double digit profit declines int he first quarter of this year.
Good content in hide demand now more then ever before, since the Internet has opened up the floodgates of rumors and conspiracy theories as it makes it too easy for every cook to create their own soapbox.
Newspapers are still the place most people go for in depth coverage and the place that TV and Radio station turn to when they want to make it appear like they provide in depth coverage. The world of Citizen Journalism and blogging is still very unorganized to post a major threat to newspapers. The best blogs are too specialized to have a huge effect on newspaper readership. You still have to read 10 or 20 blogs to get the latest news on the same topics that most newspapers provide. The blogs made be kept more up-to-date and provide links to every article that is ever publish on a particular subject but they can only do so much.
The development of Yahoo paying bloggers could lead to more news web sites and search engines paying blogger to act like freelance journalists to provide intriguing content. Freelance Bloggers working by themselves on a single topic can only do so much.
I believe that what can save newspapers from their not so certain doom is figuring out a better way to more advertise on-line from off. Lets face it no one reads the newspaper for the ads no one ever did!! But on most newspaper websites it is becoming harder and harder to avoid all the pop up ads that come up every time you click on a article. The ones that jump out and cover the screen so that you can't read what is underneath them or close them are one of the most annoying things that a tel-marketed ever dreamed up.
Newspapers should look for a way to work with advertises to provide personal advertising based on the reading habits of their customers. They need to create ads that compliment their coverage of entertainment and arts rather then annoying ads that making reading the newspaper online such a pain in the neck.
No matter how annoying you make things I am still going to read the paper online just because its easier and cheaper then picking it up from the newsstand every day. This is a fact don't act like your customers are doing something evil or illegal by reading online.
Whatever happen to adapting to what the customs wants instead of resenting it.
Making the advertising less annoying and more person is one way to fix the revenue stream, One way to provide more intriguing content is to focus on local news or even provide a web site for Hyperlocalism coverage. Another way is to ask readers about what they think the newspaper should cover. To use a survey or focus group or just an open call for comments to give them a say in the way that the newspaper set its coverage priorities.
This is a good article about the origins of citizen Journalism and the part that citizen journalists played in breaking the scandal over the firing of eight U.S. attorney.
Commenting on the important role for such a new media that is not corporate dominated and owned, but that is able to fulfill the role of citizen journalism, Linda Milazzo writes, "New Media voices ... won't permit another president to disregard the will of the people as the "Old Press" wantonly do, a new press will have free unencumbered voices, much of which arise from the Internet."(12)
Citizen Journalism has played a big part in the middle east when the mainstream media is often run by the government and their are severe restriction on freedom of speech. In China, Iran and Egypt several bloggers have been arrested for casting a spotlight on social justice.
OhmyNews International is a good site to go to for stories about citizen journalism since Oh My news was one of the first major media organizations to promote citizen journalism.
Iraq still remains the most dangerous assignment for Journalists according to the Committee to Project Journalists as the death toll for Journalists killed since 2003 reaches 100. This also is one of the reasons why American journalists rarely leave the settle of the green zone to capture the story of Iraq civilians. The best way to get their story as I state in early blogs is to go on the Internet and search out blogs and video blogs create by Iraq citizens.
The Sunlight Foundation is pooling citizen journalists to investigate the government. One of the projects gives directions of how to see if representatives are putting their spouses on their campaign payrolls. So far they have investigated 438 member and found 19 spouses who were paid by a member's campaign committee-totaling $636,876 since January 1, 2005.
They have also sent letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to lobby for legislation to require members file their personal financial information as part of their campaign for government transparency.
Here is a good blog about the development of blogging and how the mainstream media has turned towards bloggers and citizen Journalists for help with reporting.
The L.A. Times published a debate between two journalists about the current state of the news media and its future. They both seem to agree that the Internet is
opening up a whole new world and dramatically transforming the possibilities for journalism. and To secure its future, Big Media is going to have to try something it hasn't excelled at in recent years: Producing a quality product.
More and more websites from The Chicago Tribune with Triblocal to neighborsgo are going up all the time that act like community bulletin board with community-generated content, where people can post info and picture on local events. In a sense these sites let average citizens contribute to a profiles of their home town Like MySpace made the art of creating you own profile popular. In a way these sites can also give little towns a chance to advertise themselves with real stories from people without all the spin that tourism office's dream up.
Can user-generated news site that depend on readers to provide the content allow users to release copyrighted material even encryption code?
On Tuesday, Digg had to remove a link to an article containing the the HD DVD encryption key, that programmers can use to crack the copy protection code on the new disc format.
Readers response by voting for links that contained the code and bashed Diggs attempt to remove the link, which overwhelmed the site filters. Eventually Digg founder Kevin Rose gave the go-ahead to post the code in a not posted on the site.
"You've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company."
The encryption codes should be covered by the 1998 Millennium Copyright Act but their are several loopholes.
Now that Digg has caved to its users and allowed them to post the code, attorney Gregory Rutchik of the San Francisco-based Arts and Technology Law Group says the site could be sued by the AACS.
However since the code was already made public for several moths on blogs and other websites including CondeNast's Wired.com.
The revolt of the readers has completely changed Diggs policy about taking down links according to the executive director Jay Adelson
We usually give the claimants the benefit of the doubt and take things down, thinking that it's better to be safe than sorry," says Adelson.
Now, he says, all of that has changed. "Our users have said that's not good enough," he says. "And we've made a decision to stand with them on this issue."
Beyond the ethical and legal questions that this opens up we also have to look at if their is a legal limit to what you can put on the Internet. Viacom argued that everyday people cross the legal line when they upload a video to YouTube when they decided to sue Google over YouTube clips, for $1 billion.
This also brings up the fact that no matter what the big corporations do their are millions of hackers out their trying to find a way to hack the next encryption key. What is the point of taking legal action to protect a key when it is leaked all over the Internet?
Two weeks ago attorneys for the Advanced Access Copy System used in both Blu-ray and HD DVD sent out out letter to several websites demanding that they remove references to the encryption key.
After this letter was filed and passed around the Internet Hackers started post links on Diggs, slashdot and any other website that would allow it.
Wired.com is even taking a poll of readers on how long it will take someone to post the new key online after AACS LA updates their HD DVD encryption key. So far 38.2 percent answered less than a month.
I guess they think that no matter what the AACS comes up with the encryption key will end up on a website somewhere in a matter of months. As hackers around the world work together to open up this new technology to everyone. Maybe that is one good thing about the Internet. It is almost impossible for anyone to regulate what you can and cannot post on the Internet. So the speed with which copyrighted material and encryption code ends up on the Internet makes any legal action that big corporations take almost irrelevant.
On Monday, April 30th The Associated Press reported that newspaper circulation had fallen another 2.1 percent in the last six months. This downward spiral of circulation has inspired major layoffs from several major national newspapers. In the first quarter of 2007 media companies have announced4,391 layoffs a 93 percent increase from last year. Newspapers are not the only one's layoff people; with six percent of the media job cuts coming from the magazine publishing and 12 percent from television.
In the middle of the coverage of the Virginia Tech Massacre NBC breaks its own record for the lowest prime-time viewership for the second straight week with an average of 6.2 million viewers.
Paying to reach everyone through a single dominant platform such as a general interest news outlet is a proposition that makes business sense for fewer and fewer advertisers.
Media organizations assemble and sell audiences, and the broad audience that a value-neutral news reporting operation tends to attract is no longer in demand, online or off.
What can still work, online and offline, is specialized content that appeals to a particular audience. The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are outperforming other papers.
While a few people are afraid that we are head toward a "Daily Me." where the media fragments into different niches to satisfy the desires of different marketers Google is making context-sensitive ads the industry standard. Every article and every video clip will find its own audience as people use search engines to pick and choose what they want.
No one wants to buy the whole paper if you are not going to read half of it. Why should you sit through a entire newscast when I all you want to know is did theCubs win their last game?
While everyone else in the media is cutting back and crying over spilled milk Robert Murdoch is still smiling as he looks to add to his empire.
What is he doing now?
After Launching MySpace in China, Murdoch is planning a business-news television channel to challenge CNBC. To gain a little prestige he is offering to buyDow Jones, which owns the Wall Street Journal. This announcement rocketed Dow Jones shares up 58 percent.
How did Allen Lee, an A-student and an athlete at Cary-Grove High School senior get charged with two counts of disorderly conduct and a misdemeanor that carries up to 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine?
He wrote a 342 word essay that referred to "Shooting everyone", and having sex with their dead bodies". The most damning part of the essay was the last line:
No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting. (Cary-Grove)
Lee plans on joining the Marines but now this incident caused the Marines to discharge him from their enlistment program on Friday.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre this case brings up the issue of how can high schools and college distinguish from a kid that is just mad at his teacher and a real real threat.
I believe that Lee had no intention of hurting anyone and the school district has overreacted by threatening legal charges.
If you read the whole essay you can easily see that Lee was just naming of shocking things of the hell of it because he though it would be funny. This is the kind of thing that you laugh about with you friends after class and not something you write in an assignment that a teacher will read.
Towards the end he just goes off on why he does not like his teacher and ends the essay by stating that she may inspire the first Cary Grove shooting. This is a sign of a child that is frustrated with his teacher and just wants to be done with his class. He clearly should be punished for the last line in the essay but pressing legal charges is going to far.
The killer in the Virginia Tech Massacre had a long history of mental mental problems and low self-esteem. His stayed at a mental hospital for a while, his creative writing teacher showed his violent work to the police and then refused to teach him.
In Traverse City, Michigan a 15-year-old Student threatened massacre at a local high school similar to the one at Virginia Tech. What is the difference between him and Lee? simple their behavior patterns:
The 15-year-old in Michigan confided his intentions to a faculty member Thursday and described himself as suicidal. Lee completed the Military Entry Procession station examinations and the psychiatric evaluation.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting there is a lot of paranoia going around that school administrators need to take every threat seriously. Why that make sense for specific threats and creditable bomb threats. A student with no history of behavior problems bad mouthing his teacher in a essay is not a serious threat.
What Lee said was stupid but that should not hold him back from graduating or joining the Marines if that's what he chooses to do with his life.
On Friday Congress introduced a bill that could nullify the new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) called the "Internet Radio Eqaulity Act." (IREA). The bills aims to stop the ruling which put royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio.
After the march 2 ruling advocates were worried that rates could rise between 300 to 1200 percent for webcasters. The IREA would set new rates at 7.5 percent of the webcaster's revenue the same rate paid by satellite radio.
This bill sounds like a good way to keep the CRB from making the world of internet radio to expensive for little radio stations. More community groups and colleges are using webcasts to broadcast their own radio stations most of them will be forced out of business if the CRB rulling stands.
Nicholas Negroponte is still trying to bring cheap wind-up laptops to third world children the only catch is now he says they will cost $175 instead of $100 and production may not start until October.
The former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab who now heads the not-for-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project said that project has been set pack from their original goals by the rising price of materials and changes in the design.
At least seven countries Uruguay, Nigeria, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, and Libya have expressed interested in buying the Laptops that have a crank so they can be wound by hand.
Quanta Computer, the Taiwanese manufacturer which will assemble the machine has agreed to take a profit of about $3 per laptop and the laptops will work on a low cost version of Windows.
Mr. Negroponte also said that the project was considering shipping the machines to poor schools in the U.S.
While the U.S. is second in the world for personal computers per capita.
There is still a major gap in internet access between the rich and the poor according to the pew research center.
While 82 percent of those living in households with more than $75,000 in income now have internet access only 38 percent of households earning less than $30,000 have internet access.
Only 34 percent of Internet users have logged on using a wireless connection.
We need to close the income gap in internet access by making it cheaper and easy for people to get high speed Internet access at least school if they are unable to afford it at home. More teenagers are using the internet to learn more and research topics but they are also adding content and videos.
According to a recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 57 percent of teenagers who are online, create content for the internet. Another study determines that more than 79% of U.S. broadband Internet users watched video in 2006.
The U.S. has a long way to go to provide the next generation with internet access so they can use the internet to its full potential.
According to a report in the Economists Intelligence Unit Asian and African nations are catching up to their European counterparts in affordable broadband.
The best way to truely connect the world is to increase the amount of broadband available so that people in third world countries can communicate and add content in the same ways at first world countries. AS the internet connects the world in brand new ways the media is looking at new ways to work with citizen journalists to cover world events. Citizen Journalists can cover events from the perspective of a witness who has lived in the area and knows the people rather then an outsider reporter who is throw into a war zone with little first hand knowledge of the conflict or the people involved.
MySpace is launching a new site forChina last Friday. There are already 7.7 million blogs in China with 17.5 million active bloggers. MySpace China will face competition from similar sites like WangYou.com which has 11 million users.
Hometown Baghdad is a video blog that joined YouTube on January 9, 2007 and has produced 18 videos since then of every day life in Baghdad for a group of teenagers. The latest video called "Security" gives a tour of Ausama's grandmother's house after U.S. soldiers raid it because they believed that it was a terrorists haven.
"Powerless"- Hometown Baghdad
Powerless shows us how Iraqis deal with constant power outages and living with only a few hours of power each day.
"Kiss and Tell" talks about the dating stories of Saif, Adel, and Ausama.
Adel plays his guitar for therapy and talks about his band in "Songs of Pain".
A picture of a regular school day in Iraq posted by BlogIraq.
If you want to find out what is really going on in Iraq, blogs and vlogs written by real Iraqis give a much different us a unique perspective on the war.
You can also get an idea of like in Baghdad from the McClatchy Baghdad Bureau at the Inside Iraq blog.
American newspapers rarely report on civilian life on Iraq. I found an article from German newspaper Spiegel called "Anything Is Better than Baghdad"
According to a survey complied by Mercer Human Resource Consulting Baghdad Came in Last for quality of life among global cities. The red cross released a report about the 'ever-worsening' humanitarian crisis in Iraq.
With all this bad news its hard to believe that John McCain's walk through Baghdad was anything more then a political stun to fool Americans into thinking the war is getting better.
In order to get the truth with whats is really going in the American public has to search beyond the mainstream media.
The Denver Post announced that it will buyout about 90 newsroom workers to trim costs. The paper only has about 268 workers in the newsroom so this move will take them down to 178. This comes one-year after the Post bought out a dozen newsroom positions. The Rocky Mountain News owned by Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co. eliminated 50 employees last month and The Baltimore Sun just eliminated 50 positions.
All these layoffs raise the question can small papers still provide the same quality coverage that their readers rely on with 178 people? Job cuts that are this big must have a lasting effect on what the paper is able to cover and how they divide their resources to cover local and national events. Most papers already rely on the big three to provide them with coverage of most international events. So if a paper cannot afford to have a corespondent in Iraq do they need one in Chicago? New York? Washington D.C.?
All these layoffs will probably lead papers like the Denver post to focus more on local events that they can cover better then any other news outlet.
Many news outlets have used layoffs as a way to boost their stock prices but that rarely ever works.
Media General Inc had a net lost in the first quarter of 2007 of $6.5 million and as a result they are cutting 70 staff positions from the Tampa Tribune.
In the case of Le Journal in Quebec, Canada 140 employees were locked out after the company reached an impasse with the Canadian Union of Public Employees at the daily tabloid newspaper.
Here is the Trib. vs. Sun-times ad Mocking the Mac Vs. PC ads
Tribune only recent Triumph Red Eye?
Look for our classmate in video.
Excutives at the Chicago Tribune have announced another round of firings at its Flagship and the Los Angeles Times with both papers hit by declining advertising revenues and a first quarter loss of 4 percent.
Its hard to believe that this latest round of "spring cleaning" by the Trib. has nothing to do with, real estate mogul Sam Zell purchasing the Tribune Media Group. Last year on August 25, the Trib . laid off 250 jobs and another 120 on July 14. In 2005 they dropped 900 jobs on December 7, and over 200 jobs on July 7 2004. So over the last three years they have laid off a total of 1,720 employees according to I Want Media.
While newspaper ad revenue and circulation is down in almost every category you can break it up to according to The State of the News Media 2006. Many people believe that online ad revenue will one day like 2018 surpass print advertising. Lets hope that day comes a little sooner for anyone who still has dreams of becoming a reporter at a major newspaper. Like me. Damn you Tribune Dream squasher.
While the Trib. is worried about the decline stock price since its peak on 12/32/04 at $82 a share some people other newspapers are exploring new ways to use the Internet to cash in on new ad revenue.
Daily newspapers laid off around 600 people during 2005 which is about half of the 1,200 to 1,500 reduction that is projected for 2006 by the state of the media report that comes in March.
there are a few special cases where newspapers are actually transitions from print to web and gaining in profit at the same time.
The Wall Street Journal is a special case with more than 764,000 paid subscribers to its online version, and profits of its extended online operations, including indexes and “Marketwatch,” now outstripping those of the print edition. The report had a warning about the effect of cutting staff has on the quality of newspapers.
Our sense based on the data is that deep news-staff cuts, however logical a response to tough times, may be undermining the core product in dangerous ways. The practice is certainly eating away at the range and depth of newspaper journalism in many communities. What is inspiring the recent layoffs in the newspaper industry? not falling revenue but stagnate revenue growth.
The threat to newspapers now appears from nearly every indicator. From 1950 through 1999, for instance, newspaper revenue grew seven percent a year. From 2000 through 2006, by contrast, it has grown by just 0.5%. Then in the first quarter of 2006, growth was even less: 0.35%. Newspapers people have been hiring Journalist-Programmerswho can make their website more user friendly and using their web sites to cover stories from all angles using interactive graphics. On example of a newspaper that has done thisisTheNewsTribune.comTacoma, Washington.
One other thing that might be causing the Tribune to cut its workforce Moody's cuts Tribune rating deeper into junksince the deal with Sam Zell's will give them $8.4 billion in dept. Which means should they evertake out a loan on anything the interest on it will go throw the roof.
